[LOG] What'cha doin'? [Stein/Kekale]

[Bronze Coffee]

Kekäle had given some thought to what he would like to do with his morning, and what he would not like to do with it. What he would not like to do was spend it with his twin sister. She was fine and fun most of the time, but he wasn't in the mood to be mistaken for a girl right now. And there was no way he wanted to spend time with Asoiaf. She was scary. One minute it was stories and games and adventure, and the next she was trying to remove his head without warning. Scary. But Stein wasn't scary. Stein was interesting. Stein could do things. He would find Stein.

Stein wasn't scary so much as he was annoying. If you were a girl that is. See, Stein had it in his head that girls needed protecting, especially his sisters. Why? Well, it just made sense to him. Ask him why and the boy would say he didn't know. Call it genetic coding of being a male. Either way, Stein had actually lost sight of his sisters and was now huffing about as he tried to pick up a scent or something similar to that effect. He had nothing better to do. Ultimately, however, Stein was a bored boy and he wanted something to do that would last until one of his sisters showed up and then he'd zip off to interrogate her.

He'd found himself with a loose rock, and was batting it around, distracted from his sniffing. The more he batted it around half heartedly, the more he was getting into playing with it honestly. Until his tail was lashing out, his ears were straight up. He was pouncing it and throwing it in the air and trying to catch it (always failing or getting hit in the face with it) but it was a small rock! All the while little growls and yelps filled the air about him.  

[Bronze Coffee]

"I'm more fun than a rock," Käle announced as he saw what his brother was up to. "You should come with me. We're going to have adventures that will be told of for generations to come."

Käle had actually spent most of his search for Stein coming up with that little speech, but now that he'd spoken it he was kind of wishing that he hadn't. It had sounded a lot better in his head. Aloud, it just sounded kind of ridiculous.

"What do you think?"

The yelps of joy turned into surprise as Kale spoke all of a sudden. Stein blinked and squinted green eyes at his brother before huffing and walking over to him. "...I think it sounds like you've got a very big imagination, but hey, I don't mind. ...If it involves our sisters though, we can't play mean pranks on them because we have to protect them. ...I mean we could pull their tails or try to dye the white parts a different color with berries, but nothing mean."

He put one paw down and nodded seriously at his own words. "So! ...What do you have in mind?"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Nothing to do with our sisters," Käle said forcefully. "I've had more than enough of them lately."

People always thought that because he was a twin he wanted nothing more than to spend time with his twin sister, and while he loved her very much, that was simply not the case. They were different people with different interests, and he got tired of always being considered part of a pair. It was one of the many reasons he hoped to distinguish himself in the future and become so famous he would never be thought of as part of something else.

"I was thinking we could look for wish-granting crabs on the beach. This other cub I met, Freyr, told me that his dad said there were some, and that he'd caught one once, and gotten what he wished for."

"Okay good." He nodded and let his brother explain what they were going to do and then blinked. Wish-granting crabs? That sounded amazingly fun. His ears perked forward and he grinned wide. Oh, he knew his views on his twin siblings. They liked doing things apart and doing things together. Every duo needed alone time.

Grinning wide, Stein nodded again. "Well, that seems promising! What would we wish for? To be Warlord? Oooh, maybe we can wish for a billion more wishes and just keep asking for little wishes. Liiike, all we can eat zebra or nice sunny weather so we're not stuck in the den during the rains, or maybe, maybe! we can find some better sea glass than we're getting." Stein had a tendency to collect the pretty sand glass but he didn't do anything more with it than bury it and then unbury it when he wanted to look at it.  

[Bronze Coffee]

Käle was glad Stein was interested in this venture. For one thing, it wasn't one that was likely to get them into trouble, which was always a good thing. For another, Stein had some really good ideas about what to do with their wishes.

"I don't know. That wishing for more wishes thing sounds like a good idea, but maybe we have to actually eat the crab to get the wish, so we could maybe run out of wishes if we don't wish for enough the first time. And only one of us could get the wish anyway, unless we find more wish crabs."

He wasn't daunted by the logistics of finding and catching more than one wish-granting crab. He was a cub. He didn't really think that way.

"We'll find out when we catch our first one, I guess," he said. "Let's go!"

"Eat the crab? Well... We can try it that way but if it doesn't work we should just catch the crab and have it as a pet so it can listen to grant our wishes." Stein nodded a bit more and just let his tail flick this way and that as Kale motioned them to take off.

He frolicked after his brother, circling him a few times and then settled to walk beside him. "It doesn't make sense to eat the crab though. If we eat it, it's dead. You'd think the magic would be dead too.." The orange spotted cub sighed a little as he continued to think, tilting his head this way and that before shrugging. "But you did say crabs, meaning more than one. ...How... will we know the magic ones from the regular ones?"  

[Bronze Coffee]

Personally, Käle was hoping it was more of a pet scenario. That would work out better for everyone.

"I think they talk," he answered. "Freyr said his dad said he caught the crab and it asked him not to eat it. The wish-granting came in when it was bargaining for its life."

As an afterthought, with a quick grin that marked his developing sense of humor, Käle added, "His dad ate the crab anyway, but he still got his wish. So I really don't know if the eating is important or not. It sounds like it's not really necessary, but maybe it is."

Who would have thought there was so much to consider when it came to wish-granting crabs? At least the tide was out when the reached the beach. Käle hadn't given it much thought, although like most Stormborn he knew the tides' times well enough that he didn't have to think about them. The sea sounded different, for one thing, and it just became natural after a while.

"We probably still have to catch them first, to make them talk."

Stein laughed a bit at the little anecdote and shrugged. "Well, we can eat it after it grants wishes." He continued to walk and tilted his head this way and that, rolling it so it would pop. Then it did and he was set and he ran off ahead of the other before turning around and walking backwards.

"I wonder if they're just like other crabs. Like... same color, or if they have blue shells or something. I wonder if the shell color has something to do with how they taste." His head tilted again right before he found himself on his rump from tripping on a rock. Grunting and whining because he'd bitten his tongue, he whimpered a little more and stuck it out to see if it was bleeding. No, no blood, but that would teach him to walk backwards. "Don't laugh!"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Probably Freyr's dad would have mentioned if they looked different," Käle pointed out. Unless Freyr or his father had deliberately left that part out of the telling so that he would be th eonly one who was able to get wishes from the crabs. Based on what Käle knew about Freyr's dad, that didn't seem likely, but Freyr was clever enough to think of that.

It was too late for not laughing. Käle couldn't help but laugh at his brother's lack of coordination. He did make a valiant effort to stop, though, when Stein asked. After all, they were comrades in their adventure, and that meant that they ought to respect one another a bit. Or something like that. Besides, Käle had other concerns. Namely, he didn't see any crabs, just the bubbling holes in the wet sand where they made their homes.

"Um. Do you see any crabs?" Maybe he was just missing them.

The laughing earned the dark blue male a huff and a stabbing glare. But it stopped and he got himself turned around and facing the beach, blinking. "...No. No crabs. Maybe they're in the sea." He move closer towards the water, keeping his eyes on the sand just in case some of them bubbled up and came for air.

As he walked he dug into the sand a bit to see if maybe he could dig one out. "..I want to find a purple one. Are there purple crabs? I want to taste one." Crab was one of his favorite snacks. His tail flicked this way and that as he tried, pouncing when he saw bubbles and sand moving only to dig up a clam. Oh. That's not what he wanted. He batted it towards Kale before smirking a little. "Ha! We can keep that for games in the den."  

[Bronze Coffee]

Käle shrugged, responding both to the possibility that the crabs were in the sea and the question of whether there were purple crabs. He'd never seen any, but that didn't mean there weren't any. It might just mean there weren't any here. Or maybe there were, and he just hadn't seen them. It wasn't like he spent a lot of time catching crabs.

When Stein rushed to dig, Käle darted forward to get a closer look, his paws churning up the wet sand. When it turned out to be a clam he huffed a little in disappointment and batted the thing aside before it could squirt him. He'd been squirted by clams before. It was funny to see happen to other people, but he couldn't help feeling like he'd just been peed on. Did clams even pee? They had to. Everything peed.

"It's going to stink once it dries out though, and you know how our mum gets about that." True, Txur would remove it once it started to smell, if their mother told him to, but in the meantime their mother would probably not be delighted to have the den smelling like decaying clam.

He huffed again, frustrated by the crabs who were thwarting his plans to win wishes. "Come out crabs!"

The crabs didn't seem to be listening to his brother and all he did was squint at them even harder. His paws swiped at the ground, he bounced, trying to get the vibrations down into the earth. That would make ants come out, so why not crabs? Weren't they the same? (Sort of?)

Maybe it should be raining. Though Stein wasn't sure if crabs liked the rain. They lived near the ocean and in it, so they liked water.. Everyone knew the ocean water was different and you never drank it. So maybe crabs ran from the rain to get the right kind of water...

Maybe he was thinking to hard about this.

Stein glared at the ground even harder and then moved to dig yet again, churning more mud like sand over and then blinked when he saw a claw.

"There, there!" The cub giggled and then dug around that pincher claw before he flicked the small crab out at his sibling. "Get it!"  

[Bronze Coffee]

With a less-than-impressive leap Käle dove after the crab his brother flung toward him. The sand gave way beneath his feet and stole some of the force of his jump, but he was still able to get his paws on the leggy crustacean before it could get itself back into the sand.

Käle immediately decided he didn't like the feeling of crab feet on his paws. It didn't hurt, but the sensation was kind of awful. He couldn't tell if it scratched or tickled, but he knew he didn't like it. In an unconscious effort to avoid further nastiness, Käle flicked the crab back toward Stein.

When the crab was suddenly flicked back at him, Stein wasn't looking. Instead he was rooting around for another crab to munch on himself. So said crab ended up whizzing by his head and grabbing onto his ear via that big claw, making the cub yelp out in pain and surprise and jerk his head hard this way and that.

"Ow, ow! Get it off, get it off!" He was probably bleeding! Stein didn't like this at all! He yelped and pawed at his ear, trying to dislodge the crab and whined the whole time. After a few more seconds of this, the crab came off and Stein stamped on it hard with a paw and his weight and felt it crunch under him and the sand. It made him snort and he looked over to Käle with a little glare.

"That wasn't funny or nice!" He was mainly embarrassed and there was no real heat behind his declaration.  

[Bronze Coffee]

"s**t!" Käle exclaimed before immediately flattening his ears as if he was afraid his mother could hear him swearing. Mothers could do things like that. He was sure of it.

"Sorry!" he added with a cringe as he moved to help his brother. It really had been an accident. He hadn't looked. He'd just wanted the nasty feeling off his paws. How had the stupid crab even pinched Stein so quickly while flying through the air anyway? Was it a warrior crab?

"You killed it really well," Käle offered, hoping to ameliorate his brother's justifiable ire. "But maybe we should leave the other crabs alone?"

Stein lifted up his paw a bit and then just grinned a little more. "I did, didn't I? Yeah. Let's.." He snorted and buried the crab under the sand, glaring at it hard. "Just leave them to the seagulls." With that said, those green eyes looked up at the sky to try to find birds and then just started walking back to the main part of the pride.

"....I'm not gonna tell Mother about the cussing. She'd not be happy if she found out. ..But you did sound really cool." Stein laughed a bit as he waited for his brother to catch up, perking like nothing had happened.  

[Bronze Coffee]

Käle grinned, pleased both that Stein wouldn't tattle on him, and also that he'd apparently sounded cool when he swore.

"Thanks," he said, referring to both things his brother had said.

With a backwards sneer at the crab's corpse, Käle followed his green-eyed sib away from the shore to the pride proper. He'd have to practice some more. Maybe with Svana? They practiced fighting together, and swearing was definitely part of fighting. He'd heard a lot of reavers doing it when they sparred. If he was going to be the best reaver ever, he'd have to be good at all the things reavers did, including swearing.